Wednesday, January 25, 2017

Hello gorgeous, below.
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You got me with your almost brutally modern architecture, smashed into historic Garden Design.
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Then you dropped those orbs with a glint of art nouveau reverie taking a ride with Tinkerbell.
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Your furniture borders on cliche excepting it's an ode to cubism.
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Well do I appreciate the hands & intent pruning, a cocky marvel, to those who know.
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Finally, ending with how lush can you be with the smallest amount of input.
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You're darn tooting I want to see the rest of the garden.
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Pic, above, here.
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Adore garden pics telling a story, and teaching a Garden Design class.
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What do you see, above?
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Garden & Be Well, XO T

Monday, January 20, 2014

Seating to create a gathering spot, figs for summer shade/winter sun over the benches, drystack stone wall cut into a slight slope forcing foot traffic into defined directions, formal boxwood framing pastoral views, tapering stone wall allowing only small machinery into the pasture from this direction, gravel terrace ready for men-trucks-heavy equipment, horses, or a catered soiree for 100.
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And, of course, it must all look a century old, be easy to maintain, and provide interest 24/7.
.When something appears simple, it rarely is. Same is true of people.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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Pic at a jobsite last week.
.Do you know the maximum pollinator habitat, above? Seriously, can you verbalize what creates the best pollinator habitat above? Answer at bottom.
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Being simple requires each of the decades I've been learning about gardens. Better, being simple in a garden, takes me where Joseph Campbell says our eternity is. Ironic, in this American life/era, to have found my bliss in work.
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Pics taken earlier this month at the Penny McHenry Hydrangea Festival. The porch got bigger with the furniture added. Why? More function added along with the beautiful forms. How did Susanne & I get the porch done, we schlepped everything you see into place.

Wednesday, May 15, 2013

interior.
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Have you noticed a formula for your favorite interiors & exteriors? Not into formulas? No worries, formulas are nothing more than Shopping Lists! Now, I have your attention.
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I've always been drawn to interiors with heads & ......
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In my garden is a decades old collection of broken heads. Most were a $1.
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Top pic from same home/garden as previous post. Bottom pics Nicky Haslam, via Cote de Texas article.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
.More than heads, bodies too. And urns with plinths.

Saturday, May 11, 2013

She will have a stone roundabout with historic French church gargoyle setting atop a plinth of granite, at its center, in her garden.

Quickly took pics in their home and realized, once I returned home & saw the pics, her Gargoyle Roundabout will be shaped like the central portion of the chinoiserie pattern, below, and outer line of the massed platters, above.

This happens all the time, designing in the garden and seeing validations inside the home.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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Pics same garden as previous posts. She is also the queen of rugs, picking & placing.

Friday, May 10, 2013

Lunch, below, this week. Every home seen from the chair I sat in was a century old and white clapboard.

Front porch columns each have iron rings, below, for chains lost to history, I've already designed their replacement.

With their 'swag' to mach the arch, below.

Will copy a pair of the columns, deeper into the garden, as entry to a garden room with enfilade from the front sidewalk.
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Repetition.
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Notice the power lines, bottom pics? The bane of my existence for a mature camellia I wish to keep and limb-up into a tree. They will contact the power company to see what can be done.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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Pics same garden as yesterday's post.

Wednesday, March 27, 2013

It's all part of vanishing threshold.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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Pic via Lisa Porter Collection. Take the link, lots of pics, about this home by the beach. Original article from Traditional Home July 2001. Photos by Jon Jensen for Traditional Home

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Puppet Barbuda adores this fireplace. Not at all reminiscent of the stone fireplaces in every flower show across USA redolent of the monolith floating amongst the galaxies at the end of 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Wednesday, December 26, 2012

Desire, undervalued & counterintuitive.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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Wonder which client past/future will have these in their garden. Love Magic Man, I know he can make them! Will have to tack on a pair to an order for me-me-me !
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pics via Paris Through My Lens.

Junking recently I found this dresser for the foyer of my new office. Once sited I went to the kitchen & started grabbing blue/white. Free is good.

On its way home, above/below.

What is the Garden Design indicated by the top of this chest with the blue/white? Girlfriend obviously likes pairs & focal points. Biggest platter is a gorgeous antique iron gate. Tulipiers are brick/stone columns with pair old urns and the smaller plates a flagstone path. Surface of the chest is groundcover Asiatic jasmine.

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THIS is how I see interiors. Source material for the garden.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Never anticipated my new office being this fun, 'camp chic' style. Nor psycho-analyzing my own table top style.

Friday, July 13, 2012

Impact was immense. Silhouettes are a huge Landscape Design tool. Trees, buildings, shrubs, & etc. A fresh reminder.
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And it's chiaroscuro too, my favorite time, the gloaming.
.Use silhouettes as a tool in your landscape. Love what a mature crape myrtle can do with many roof lines. Perhaps the armillary sundial on plinth? Patch of rectangular lawn at a huge palladian window. Pair of round boxwood at a doorway. You get it. Constrast the forms.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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Pic from Habitually Chic.

Friday, March 9, 2012

When I saw the broad curve of the marble, below, I knew exactly how to shape the stone decking of the new pool.

She asked for a potager, it reminds her of her father. The diamonds, below, are repeated sparingly throughout the house. Diamond shapes will form the new potager, of course.

A sumptuous limestone mantle being installed, below, yesterday.

There are 3 pair of stone columns designed in the back garden. I will cap them with the same limestone/style of the mantle.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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Creating a landscape like this none of the details can be wrong, or even 'off' a bit. My work must flow with the owners ideas, their architect & interior decorator. Is your Landscape Design worth any less consideration? Even if you don't have an architect, decorator, gardener?
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Have been to this site several times thru construction and my little chair/table have been in a dozen spots.

Friday, February 17, 2012

She offered some of her collards, above, but they were too pretty to pick.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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I espalier a lot of things. Tried a hydrangea espalier? Lushness without effort, sasanqua's too. Sometimes, I espalier, truly due to tight space.

Tuesday, July 19, 2011

Arching tendrils of pearls & foliage contrasting deliciously with the crape myrtle.
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Come thru the gate (you're standing in the street now) & into my Tea Olive Terrace. Thru the pink crape myrtle blossoms you can see my office windows.
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Poke Salad is great for birds, they love the berries, they mature a deep aubergine. One year, they ate so much they were pooping, on the fly, and it (purple poo) was landing across the street on my neighbor's white garage door.
Who knew birds were the original Jackson Pollock?
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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Pic taken in my garden same day as previous pic.

Monday, July 18, 2011

you see micro details.
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Do you see my neighbor's house? It's there.
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I designed this garden space, at my driveway, to greet me as I come/go in my car. It had been lawn.
.There is not a day in the year this garden is without bloom.
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Maximum pollinator habitat too. Why/how? High density, low density, tall plant height, medium plant height, low plant height, contrasting form, year round blooms & groundcovers.
.Pure Bravura. Why? Drought tolerant, little maintenance. Full sun area, deciduous trees shade my house in summer & let the winter sun in. Cha-Ching, savings.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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Pics taken near my front door, same day as previous post.

Monday, August 23, 2010

Simplicities: trim color is not a bright white, no window screens, interior window treatments are elegant, lights on inside, contrasting foliage textures, contrasting foliage colors, espaliered lushness upon home, well maintained, easy to maintain, urn is fabulous enough to be empty, urn is not hugging wall of home or frontdoor, classic template of centuries copied, design is elegant in winter, makes me want to see the interior, makes me want to see the rest of the garden, the landscape describes the owners. Front of home, above, and its backyard, below.

Shown in yesterday's post too.

A retired couple lives here. They maintain the garden.

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Two important questions to ask yourself about a pic of your home.

1. Is it so wonderful I must see inside?2. Is it so wonderful I must see the entire landscape?

Monday, February 15, 2010

Each garden room should have a cone shaped evergreen. Bringing eyes to the sky. .Honestly, dahlings, I don't make this stuff up. .More honestly. It was the hardest rule to get right. Done correctly cone shaped evergreensappearserendipitous. Lagniappes..Ha.................! Anything but..Cone shapes, mostly, are inherent in what you've already designed. If not, they're balanced symmetrically/asymmetrically with house or trees or garden room or, or, or..They will feel right..Study pics of landscapes using cone shaped evergreens correctly. Study-study-study. It took me years to get this right. .Garden & Be Well, XO Tara.Pic taken in my garden last Thursday. The cone? 2 Italian cypress planted with rootballs touching, beginning in 1 gallon pots. (Proof I'm patient, ha.) Songbirds love nesting in these cypress..Studying cone use in Italy it's obvious their style won't work in USA. Why? Don't know. Whenever I see a USA landscape copying an Italian landscape with lots of cones they look stupid. Hmm? Anyone know why?